The day my mother went to war

And the gates of Hell opened wide.

“Your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.”

— Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

If you happen to be an insect, you could do a lot worse than end up at my mother’s house.

She doesn’t kill bugs, but rather escorts them in toilet paper or a glass, to the patio, where they can live long, healthy lives.

She even used to keep a pet spider in the window. Just a tiny thing that never seemed to grow. It had been in her front window for ages until a visitor spotted it and gasped.

“That’s a tick,” he declared, horrified.

I knew there was something amiss with that little fellow.

Mom was pretty casual about it though. No smushing. Just a gentle walk out the door. There was a bit of lecturing to my mom about keeping the wrong kind of company and all that. But she will never change her ways. Her home is a haven for all. Even me.

But I’ll be damned if I have to live with boxelders. These critters look kind of like beetles. Only with a splash of red on their back. I hate them.

They don’t bite. And only crawl on you by accident. But, boy, do they ever accumulate.

My mother’s patio is infested with boxelders. In the daytime, they bunch up against the bricks, oozing forth from the cracks between them. Winter is coming — and they’re trying to squeeze as much life from the waning sun as they can. Somehow, they’re finding their way inside, mostly through some hidden crevice in the upstairs bathroom window.

Taking a compassionate page from my mother, I’ve humanely ushered dozens outside. That’s no small feat, considering I have to gently wrap each bug in tissue, then scramble downstairs, past my gaping mother on the couch and then out the patio door — which she insists on securing with three locks and a bar pressed against it.

Then I’ll head back upstairs to my lair — only to find another boxelder on the window sill and have to repeat the process all over again.

Do they appreciate the ends I go to in order to keep their intruding asses alive?

Probably not.

But in this house, all life is sacred.

The other morning, about to step in the shower, I spotted another one of those infernal creatures. And, once again, I began the exfiltration process. As I descended the steps wearing only my underwear, I declared to my mother and sister in the living room, “I can’t live like this.”

“It’s a big step up from the crack den,” my sister chortled from the couch.

My mom laid it out plainly: “You don’t know how to suffer any more.”

Good point. In that moment, I had certainly forgotten where I had come from. Why did boxelders vex me so much when I used to live with bedbugs, roaches, mice and all kinds of creepy-crawlies?

Even worse, my own body was once home to them. To this day, my family doesn’t believe me — cocaine psychosis, they’d echo Google’s prognosis — but I had seen the tiny worms and black specks on my body. I had only to lay down on a white sheet for a moment, and they'd be scattered all around me.

“That’s just dirt,” mom would say, squinting at the linens.

No, they were definitely bugs. In any case, after a great many showers, the tingles and itches began to subside. I’m feeling fairly confident that I’m bug-free. But, like my habit itself, I sometimes wonder if they’re just dormant beneath my skin.

The boxelders, on the other hand, were flaunting their immunity from prosecution in this household. It had reached the point where I was shuttling them outside, one by one, at all hours. Oh, how I ached to go on a smush-athon. A flush-athon! But this was a house of peace, presided over by the patron saint of bug-kind — my infinitely gentle and forbearing mother.

Until one morning, she came in from the patio, wide-eyed and breathless. She had surveyed the sea of boxelders.

“THEY’RE STARTING TO BURROW THEIR WAY IN!”

She set to work mixing one of her potions — lavender, mint or whatever.

(NOTE: You know someone is no good when nice smells drive them away.)

She started with the bathroom upstairs. As she sprayed the window ledge, boxelders started falling from their hiding places, dropping onto their back, legs twitching madly.

It was working.

“Let me take this show on the road,” I said, reaching for her spray bottle.

“No,” she said, clinging to her precious potion. “I’m going to do it.”

A moment later, she was in the doorway, shouting up the stairs, “I’m going to war!”

“Kill them, mom! We have to kill them all!”

I ran down the stairs to witness the bloodbath. Mom had already dropped her spray bottle. She was hoovering up bugs from the house walls, wholesale.

“Is there one on me?” she asked, twirling the vacuum hose around herself. “Is there one on me??”

“You’re okay, mom. There’s one there! There!”

It was chaos. At first, we were mad with bloodlust. But eventually, we settled into an effective eradication routine. She would spray her minty-lavender concoction in cracks between the bricks. When the bugs marched out — hordes of them! — I would suck them up with the vacuum.

For the most part, we made an efficient killing unit — with an occasional wobble.

“Only one person on the vacuum!” I yelled, as my mom tried to direct the hose.

“I want to get that fly.”

“No, mom,” I yelled over the whirring vacuum. “Flies aren’t part of our mandate. Stay focused.”

“I think I have one in my underwear!”

“No, you don’t, mom. Keep spraying!”

“Give me the hose!”

“No mom! I've got it. Wait! There is one on your back now…”

“Look! Look! They're pouring out of the crack!”

“I see it, mom! I got i- THERE'S ONE ON MY NECK!”

The bug brigades kept marching out of their trenches. Mom snatched the vacuum from me. But she was spooked. Erratic. Dreadful scenes unfolded — bugs getting smushed by the end of the hose. Other critters tried to hide under the corpses of their comrades. Some were beheaded: others torn in two by the force of the vacuum. The horrors! And still they kept coming.

I regained control of the vacuum. But, at this point, mom was too unhinged. She seemed to be pointing in every direction at once.

“Up there!” mom hollered. “To your left! Are you blind?! Give me that!”

A boxelder battalion emerged from under the window ledge, even landing a paratrooper in my mom's hair.

She was feral in her blood-addled frenzy. Maybe even a little like me when I first landed on her doorstep, pointing to bugs on my skin that may or may not have existed.

Over several hours, we must have sucked up thousands of boxelders. And, at last, I dropped a writhing vacuum bag into a neighborhood dumpster.

We knew that we had crossed a line. Our home was no longer a refuge for insects. It was a killing field. And we couldn’t be more proud of our effort on the battlefield.

Mom and son. Destroyers of worl-- “Wait - wait! There’s one!”

It wasn’t until hours later, that she finally collapsed in the couch, pale and exhausted. We were both hungover from our drunken orgy of slaughter.

She could barely finish her smoothie.

“Killing those things really messes with your appetite,” she said, meekly.

It’s true. We had both seen things — done things — that would stay with us for a very long time.